Computer networking has become the focus of much attention in the data communications industry. Performance improvements in processors and peripherals, along with the move to distributed architectures such as client-server configurations, have spawned increasingly data-intensive networking applications. Various protocols have been developed to provide the necessary communications capacity corresponding to such applications. Hence, there exists a need for intercommunication between computer networks that use different protocols. For example, many customers would prefer to expand their existing networks with the latest protocol. Other customers simply need low-latency communication between dissimilar protocols. Integrating protocols is therefore highly desirable.